Chef Cara Mangini has taken over the kitchen at ROTATION by Feast It Forward inside Napa's Oxbow Public Market for a month-long September residency, bringing her trademark vegetable-first cooking to a downtown space that has cycled through some of the country's most recognizable chefs this year. Mangini, an award-winning author known professionally as the Vegetable Butcher, plans to showcase Napa Valley produce through modern, produce-first versions of classic Italian and Italian-American dishes.
Mangini officially assumed the kitchen during a Pass the Plate handoff event on Monday, taking over from outgoing August resident chef Robert Sulatycky, a Michelin-starred chef and Bocuse d'Or coach, according to Visit Napa Valley. As reported by the Napa Valley Register, Mangini said her residency brings together her California Italian heritage, her vegetable-focused food perspective, and her connection to Napa Valley. Last Friday, ahead of the official handoff, she prepared dishes at ROTATION, including an end-of-summer tomato sauce with fresh bucatini, a watermelon and kale panzanella salad, beet risotto, and a butternut squash and Swiss chard lasagna, per the same account.
A Bay Area Chef With Deep Napa Ties
Mangini is a Bay Area native who grew up in Redwood City and is now based in Cow Hollow, San Francisco. She studied journalism at Northwestern University, attended a culinary school focused on natural foods, and wrote fashion pieces for the Chicago Tribune before building her culinary career, the Register notes. Her resume includes stints working for Estée Lauder, serving as Little Eater's executive chef after creating the restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, and working as the Vegetable Butcher for Eataly in New York City, where she was the company's first official vegetable butcher.
Her ties to Napa Valley run through Long Meadow Ranch, which owns Farmstead restaurant in St. Helena and an organic farm in Rutherford. Mangini wrote her debut book, *The Vegetable Butcher*, during her time working there. She has also produced Produce Inspired, an estate-grown olive oil collection made from Italian blend and Arbequina varieties, milled immediately after harvest and produced in St. Helena from the 2025 harvest.
The Book That Made Her Name
Mangini's persona as the Vegetable Butcher stems from her family history as the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of traditional New York meat butchers, a lineage that prompted her to apply the precision of butchery cuts to vegetables instead, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. *The Vegetable Butcher* went on to win two International Association of Culinary Professionals cookbook awards and became a James Beard Award finalist, aiming to make vegetable preparation approachable through simple recipes. Southern Living magazine has ranked it the number two cookbook of all time, trailing only *The Joy of Cooking*, per Hachette Book Group.
In March 2024, Mangini followed up with a second major cookbook, The Vegetable Eater: The New Playbook for Cooking Vegetarian, featuring more than 100 vegetable-forward recipes built around 35 core dishes with seasonal variations, according to Goodreads. The Culinary Institute of America and EAT Foundation have named her one of the world's top 50 plant-forward chefs, per her website. As the Register reports, Mangini has said food does not have to be thought of as vegetarian, just delicious.
Founder of the Vegetable School
Beyond her books, Mangini founded the Vegetable School, which she runs as a monthly educational pop-up clinic at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center Farmers' Market in partnership with the California Farmers Market Association. The free program offers immersive vegetable education and bespoke culinary experiences, with monthly programming running through the Fort Mason market's summer and fall calendar, teaching produce selection and prep skills to home cooks.
The pandemic disrupted an earlier plan by Mangini to open a produce-focused Italian-style deli at Napa's Oxbow Public Market, according to the Register. Her ROTATION residency effectively revives that unrealized vision, this time inside a rotating kitchen concept rather than a standalone deli.
Filling a Prime Spot at Oxbow
ROTATION launched earlier in 2026 as a partnership between Feast It Forward and Visit Napa Valley, filling the former C Casa space at 610 First Street inside Oxbow Public Market after that storefront sat vacant for more than a year following C Casa's closure amid regulatory issues, according to Visit Napa Valley. The venue runs on a continuous monthly turnover model, hosting a lineup of high-profile chefs that has included Martin Yan in February, Tristen Epps in March, Nyesha Arrington in April, Lee Anne Wong in May, Lamar Moore in June, Anna Voloshyna in July, and Sulatycky in August, per DoNapa.
Oxbow's shift toward rotating culinary residencies followed the closures of longtime tenants C Casa and Eiko's sushi counter, with market management turning to short-term chef takeovers to drive repeat local and tourist foot traffic, according to reporting cited in a blog analysis of the market's strategy. Feast It Forward itself was founded in 2011 by Napa vintner and media producer Katie Hamilton Shaffer, who opened the brand's flagship live film studio and experiential showroom in downtown Napa in 2018. The company now operates four business ventures, including the Yard, the Studio, and the Feast.Network media network, alongside ROTATION.
A Marquee Dinner Mid-Residency
Mangini's month at ROTATION includes a high-profile ticketed event: she is scheduled to co-host The Big Reveal Dinner on September 8 alongside ROTATION Executive Chef Jeff Mosher to unveil official results from the 50th-anniversary Judgment of Paris re-tasting, according to Visit Napa Valley's event listing. The dinner is set to feature a three-course menu pairing American and French dishes with premier wines. Shaffer has said Mangini represents the vision behind ROTATION, per the Register's reporting.
Mangini's residency runs through September 30, giving Napa Valley visitors and locals several more weeks to sample her vegetable-forward take on Italian and Italian-American classics before the kitchen turns over to its next resident chef.
